December 2, 2009 --EMC Corp. announced that Denver Health and Hospital Authority teamed with EMC Consulting, a business within EMC Global Services, to help Denver Health design, implement, and manage technology solutions to streamline operations. In addition to helping maximize the value of information in Denver Health's data warehouse, EMC Consulting provided experts to implement a scalable IT infrastructure that delivers high performance and near 100% uptime with advanced monitoring, planning, redundancy, and virtualization solutions.
EMC Consulting's Healthcare Practice helps healthcare providers of all sizes implement solutions to address today's healthcare challenges. The Practice develops strategies that leverage technologies to address specific needs, such as implementing the supporting information infrastructure needed to demonstrate "meaningful use" of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) to support ARRA HITECH Medicare and Medicaid initiatives.
Denver Health, a 500-bed "safety net" facility, is committed to serving patients of all economic levels. Nearly half of its patients are uninsured or unable to pay, and services to the uninsured are expected to total nearly $360 million in 2009. The hospital system, comprising a medical center, a regional Level I trauma center, a 911 system, family health centers, public school clinics, Denver Public Health, a poison and drug center, an inmate health care program, and the Rocky Mountain Center for Medical Response to Terrorism, has invested more than $350 million in IT over the past 12 years.
"Our goals have been to improve patient care quality and safety, while at the same time increasing efficiency and controlling costs, and we're achieving those goals," said Patricia Gabow, M.D., CEO of Denver Health. "Although Denver Health is Colorado's largest uninsured and Medicaid provider, we remain financially sound, and a large part of our fiscal strength can be attributed to our innovative and widespread use of technology. We believe there is no healthcare facility in the nation that's done as broad and deep a transformation as ours."
Teaming with EMC Consulting, Denver Health conducted a thorough assessment of its business environment to evolve its processes into an end-to-end, digital healthcare environment. Denver Health implemented several hundred applications, 70 of which it considers core to its business, such as financial coding, claims 'scrubbing,' clinical support and medical imaging (PACS). Some of the key initiatives undertaken by Denver Health and EMC as part of this comprehensive partnership include an Eligibility Re-Verification System to maximize the reimbursements it can recoup from previously uninsured patients; new automated systems for tracking infectious disease testing, and vaccination and immunization delivery and tracking; and professional services necessary to support ongoing applications.
"Healthcare delivery is all about technology -- we're gathering every bit of information that we can, about everything that we do in the clinical perspective, and it is all going in a data warehouse, because if you can measure it, you can improve it or fix it," said Gregg Veltri, CIO of Denver Health. "Through our partnership with EMC, we're using the data in very innovative ways to eliminate waste and manual processes and become more streamlined and cost effective."